


The Fall Of Red Arrow

by DynamicDuo (XylB)



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Drug Addiction, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Injury Recovery, Loss, Loss of Limbs, Past Drug Addiction, Recovery, Rise of Arsenal, slight and brief suicide reference/contemplation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27947078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XylB/pseuds/DynamicDuo
Summary: Star City lays decimated at Prometheus's hands. With the city reeling, and the body count getting higher each day, it's hard to find hope. It's hard to find optimism, with the city in disarray and the superheroes stretched just as thin as the emergency service workers.In the wake of the attack, Roy wakes up to his worst nightmare - toanyone'sworst nightmare.The attack on Star City leaves everyone in pieces. This is how Roy falls apart and lets his family piece him back together.(A re-write of The Rise Of Arsenal)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	The Fall Of Red Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> As a re-write of The Rise Of Arsenal (with some Justice League Rise and Fall references peppered in), this fic deals with many of the same topics the comic does, as a general warning. 
> 
> If you're unfamiliar with Rise as a comic, here are some of the more heavy hitting plot points: 
> 
> 1\. Prometheus (villain) coordinates an attack on all the major superhero cities, but only manages to attack Star City before the League stop him. Electrocutioner (villain) initiated the attack, but I don't deal with him in this fic.  
> 2\. Lian is one of the casualties.  
> 3\. Prometheus cut off Roy's left arm 
> 
> I ignored everything from the last half of issue three onwards. 
> 
> If any part of the Navajo references are wrong or offensive, please _please_ tell me - I did what research I could, but if you know better, please correct me.

Waking up hurts. It hurts, but not in the sharp, riptide way he was expecting, not in the - 

He doesn't register the voices during his first bouts of consciousness. Low murmurs, rhythmic beeping, someone tucking blankets around him, and then he drifts again, forgetting the pain, forgetting - 

Forgetting. 

He dreams loosely of broken monitors and flaming swords, and he's not sure why. Lian pops up in some dizzy corner, sometimes, with Mia at her side, playing together, and they feel worlds away. Roy crosses the distance and the distance expands and the ground cracks open into a wide, yawning abyss, and a fiery sword slices through the vision moments later. He thinks he cries, thinks he might be kicking something, doesn't think at all when the dream hovers upside-down and shatters like a computer screen. For some reason, Lian's face remains on the glittering shards on the floor, slivers of blue eyes and dark hair and Mia in the background, playful, teasing, both of them smiling and laughing until pain lances through the vision again. 

Waking up hurts. This time, it feels more permanent. He registers the fabric against his skin, and the voices in the room, but not who they belong to. Keeps his eyes closed as he tries to think where he is, tries to remember what he could possibly be doing. Wiggles his toes, focuses on his muscles, twitches his legs, his shoulders, his face, his fingers - 

His fingers. His - 

"Roy," a gentle voice says, a hand on his shoulder, on his _right_ shoulder, the one with fingertips that don't feel anything underneath them - 

"My arm, I can't feel my arm, I can't - " he mumbles, furrows his brow, focuses and tries to flex his right forearm again, what the fuck is he _on_ , what kind of damage needed _that_ level of numbing - 

"His pulse is spiking." Cyborg. _Victor_. 

"Roy, hey, Roy, breathe." Another voice, to his left this time, familiar, deeper. 

"My _arm_ ," he tries again, and cracks open an eye to see Donna at his right, Dick at his left, the cowl pulled down to reveal his worried face. Roy turns his head to look down, but Donna catches his chin with one finger, forcing him to keep looking up. She searches his eyes for a long moment, and Roy's ribs feel too tight, like he can't get a full breath, and his arm is so _numb_ \- 

Between one blink and the next, he remembers the flaming sword. 

"My arm," he says, less urgent, a realisation, the beginning of a panic - "My arm." 

"We couldn't reattach it," Dick says quietly, resting careful fingers on Roy's left arm underneath the sheets. "There was too much damage." 

Donna's finger keeps his face where it is. Roy looks to her and sees the same concern shining in her eyes, a frown pulling down the corners of her mouth. 

"Let me see," he whispers. She considers him for a long moment, stoic and fearful and something unspeakably sad behind her eyes, and she lets him go with a nod. 

It's uglier than he expected, looking down. A metal band, and the wires going in where his arm used to be - 

He looks away with a lump in his throat. Only then does he register the other occupants, focuses on them instead of the - instead of - 

Hal stands near the end of the bed, something strange and forlorn in his expression. Oliver lingers a few steps behind him, jaw tense and fingers curled into a hard fist at his side. Cyborg stands with a medical tablet in his hand at the foot of the bed, understanding and compassion in his human eye. In the corner, Mid-Nite fiddles with equipment that Roy can't make out. 

And Dinah, coming up beside Dick, a mournful slant to her mouth. Roy feels abruptly shaken, seeing her so affected, and then he _remembers_ \- 

"Star City," he says. Dinah nods. It doesn't feel like a full answer. There's something she's not saying, held back in the tight lines around her mouth, in the tension in her posture. 

If Ollie and Hal are here, the attack must have been stopped. They wouldn't be standing at Roy's bedside if there were still people to save. But Barry and Wally are nowhere to be seen - clean-up, then, whizzing through the city and tying up loose ends. 

But there's someone missing. Roy's almost certain that if they've defeated Prometheus, and they've stopped the attack, and he got injured enough to land in a medbay bed, then someone else should be here, probably underneath Dick's cape, maybe holding onto his leg, holding his hand, scared and wide-eyed but stubborn brave. Just like her father, Donna would say. 

"Where's Lian?" He asks, and the room grows cold. Dinah's lip trembles, and Donna's frown deepens. Dick looks away, but his fingers are shaking on Roy's arm. 

Ollie's expression morphs into indescribably sadness, his mouth twisting as he looks at Roy. Hal's force field flickers and deactivates. 

"No," Roy says, firm, before anyone can confirm his mounting suspicions. "No, where _is_ she. Where's Mia? Where's - " 

"I'm so sorry, Roy," Dinah says, and when her eyes water in the corners, she doesn't dry them. Tears trickle down her face as she tells him, as she explains the chaos after the attack, that Lian - 

Roy feels numb when she stops speaking. Feels odd, feels detached, feels like he's watching Dick sniffle and Donna squeeze his shoulder from far away, like he's floating above his own body. Doesn't realise he's crying until Ollie cracks and apologises, leans down where Donna was and half-hugs him. He's still tense underneath it all, but Roy can't feel anything but overwhelmingly _numb_. Hal's voice breaks when he apologises. 

Lian - Lian's - 

He can't even bring himself to think it. Dick lets him cry on his shoulder, one arm wrapped awkwardly over his middle, and Donna rests a comforting hand on his chest in lieu of his hand, and it hurts so so much more than losing his arm ever could. 

\-- 

The next few days are almost as rough. Dick and Donna visit as much as they can. Hal spends quiet nights with him. Wally brings a couple of Lian's things in a box that he keeps by his bedside, and stays with him the rest of the day. Barry sits in on the nights sometimes as well. 

Mid-Nite quietly, gently, tells him about the nanomites. That he can't easily get a cybernetic replacement. Roy can't really bring himself to care about archery when his chest feels like it's been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop. 

He says as much. Mid-Nite brings him tissues and holds his hand and ups the sedative dose so he can sleep when he asks. 

Thanks to the League care, Roy's up and walking a week later. Nothing strenuous, but he can use the bathroom by himself and take a bath and wander in his room. He can take his sedative doses himself, and dreams happily of Lian once they take effect. 

It hurts. It hurts beyond belief. 

He asks about Lian's body. Mid-Nite's lips tighten and purse but he doesn't lie. 

Roy asks Dick to accompany him to the morgue. 

"You don't have to," Dick reminds him. "It's - she's been identified, you don't - " 

"I - need to. I think." Roy's not sure what he needs. Dick loops an arm around his waist and helps him down the stairs. 

"Who identified her?" He asks in a tremble. 

"Mia. And Oliver." Dick swallows thickly. "Mid-Nite double-checked her DNA as well." 

Roy nods and lets Dick lead him to the locker with _Harper, Lian_ on it. Dick takes a deep breath and pulls the tray out. He looks away while Roy stares dumbly at the blanketed form in front of him. 

Dick's never been able to look at kid's bodies. Neither has Roy, if he's honest, but this feels like something he _should_ do. 

They stand there for fifteen long, silent minutes, Dick's arm still curled around him and his forehead pressed to Roy's temple. Roy trembles, struggles not to disassociate, manages it, just barely, clutching pathetically at Dick's shirt. Part of him wants to lift the sheet, part of him wants to hold her hand, part of him wants to just break down and cry and hold her one last time, and - 

He knows how she died. It _aches_ inside him, tears at his heart with vicious claws, and in deepest night he can't help wondering what her last words were. Whether they were _Mia, help!_ or _Daddy, help!_. 

"I can't," he mumbles eventually, staring at the sheet until his vision blurs with tears and they run down his cheeks like rain. "I can't look, I can't look at her, Dick, I can't - put her away, put - " he swallows, and Dick's already moving to push the tray back in. "Please." 

"I know," Dick says softly, when he locks the door and returns to Roy's side. "I know, Roy." He sounds on the brink of tears himself, and when Roy buries his face into Dick's neck to try and muffle himself, he can feel his own shirt growing damp where Dick's nose presses into his shoulder. 

\-- 

Dinah takes him to his old house, now with broken windows and a destroyed front garden, but it's still his _house_. 

He has a two bottles of painkillers in his pocket. One prescribed, and the other stolen because they makes him drowsy and it helps him sleep and when he sleeps medicated he dreams of Lian, and he misses her so viciously it feels like his heart is being ripped out of his chest some days. 

There's not much left in the house. It's been raided and looted, but Lian's room was thankfully already cleared out by Wally, all her possessions tucked away into two boxes - one that sits by Roy's bedside, and one that sits in his bedroom in S.T.A.R. Labs. Still, her furniture is knocked askew, her bed is broken down the middle, and its pink paint is already flaking and curling at the bedposts. 

He feels close to her here. It doesn't edge out the raw, unfiltered _pain_ , but it digs something deeper in his chest, something achingly fond and painfully sentimental. 

"I want to be alone," he whispers, sitting in the remains of her bedframe, but even he doesn't believe it. 

"No you don't," Dinah replies, and sits down next to him. Roy shakes his head. 

"I really don't," he manages before his voice cracks and he's swallowing down another lump in his throat. "Can we - stay here tonight?" 

Dinah twists her fingers between his and nods. "Yeah. We can stay." 

"Just one night." Roy's eyes sting with tears. "I don't - think I could handle more. I just - I just want to say goodbye." To this house, to this home, to Lian, to - to everything he had with her and everything he never will have. 

"Whatever you want," Dinah assures him. "I'm so fucking sorry, Roy." 

"So am I." 

\-- 

The pills help. They help so goddamn much. Roy can't close his eyes without seeing death and destruction, but when the medication enters his system, all the nightmares melt away, all the ugliness washes away to leave him with happy memories and happy dreams. 

Mid-Nite probably knows he's stealing pills. He doesn't know what Mid-Nite will do about it, but he doesn't care when he can lay back in his S.T.A.R. Labs room, pop a couple of painkillers - double his allowed dosage - and dream of her. Of dropping her off at school, at their ice cream and movie nights, of the most mundane, boring shit he ever did but now highlighted in gold because of _her_. 

He sees the news of Ollie's arrest on the TV. It shocks him to his core, and yet completely unsurprises him, but when Dinah knocks on his door a second later to tell him, her eyes flick to the news program and she just sighs. 

He visits Ollie in jail. His chest swirls with conflicting emotions - grief, overwhelmingly, and pain and anger and _rage_ and misery all over again, some turbulent, twisting cycle that pushes him through the door to face Ollie, standing calmly in his cell. 

Roy thinks of when he woke up, of Ollie tense and strange. Hiding something, Roy realises now, hiding Prometheus. 

"It's good to see you," Ollie says, pressing a hand up against the glass. Roy hesitates before placing his own over it. The stump of his right arm twinges. 

"You too," he says. His mouth feels like it's filled with cotton. "Why?" 

Ollie seems to know what he's asking. He looks away, his brow pinching together with consternation. 

"He killed Lian," he replies hollowly. 

"He attacked Star City," Roy says, echoing Dinah's disappointment, Barry's sadness, Hal's conflict. "He attacked the whole _city_ and - and - " 

"And that alone wouldn't have spurred me to do this," Ollie admits. "I'm not a good man, Roy. I'm not a good - " He doesn't finish the sentence. Roy swallows down the lump in his throat and leans his forehead against the glass. 

"I wanted to kill him," Roy murmurs. "I wanted to _so_ badly." When he woke up drenched in sweat at four a.m., still attached to machines and wires and IVs. When he sat on Lian's broken bedframe and cried into Dinah's arms. 

"It didn't change anything," Ollie says, steel in his voice. "It didn't _help_." 

"I know," Roy whispers. He doesn't know if he even could have gone through with it, not like Ollie - doesn't know if he could stare a man down and _kill_ him, and a twisted kind of guilt lances through his chest at that. Doesn't know if he could even avenge his _daughter_ , felt like he could sometimes, and then others was too consumed by grief to even consider anyone else but himself. 

He doesn't _know_. 

"I'm glad I did it," Ollie says. Roy frowns at him, a question forming on his lips, but Ollie speaks before he can ask it. 

"Not for revenge," Ollie adds, and meets Roy's gaze. There's something unquestionably fierce in his eyes. "But so that you couldn't ruin your life with the same mistake." 

"I don't have much of a life anymore," Roy mumbles, and sits down on the floor, still pressed up to the glass wall. Oliver kneels on the other side, rests his forehead against Roy's through the glass. "Lian's gone. My arm - I won't be able to do what I used to. There's nothing left for me, Ollie." 

"That's not true." 

Roy closes his eyes and nods weakly. "Yes it is." 

"It's _not_." Ollie audibly presses his palm to the glass once more. "Roy, listen to me, there's still so much for you." 

"Not without her," he bites back. 

"I know," Ollie agrees. "And it'll hurt. I know it will. But you can't give up." 

"Why not?" 

Ollie swallows thickly. Roy squeezes his eyes shut tighter to fight back the wave of tears. 

"If not for yourself, for other people," Ollie replies quietly. "At least at first." He pauses. "Your family." 

"You're in _jail_." 

"I wasn't talking about myself." 

Surprised, Roy opens his eyes to see Oliver giving him a wry smile. 

"I mean the family that was _there_ for you," he says. "I know I wasn't a good father." 

"You did your best." 

"I fell short so many times." Ollie's eyes are an intense, serious green. "You were always better than me in that regard." 

"Ollie - " 

"Dinah." Ollie smiles sadly. "Hal. They were better family than I ever was." 

"You _know_ I've forgiven you for - " 

"It doesn't change the fact that I wasn't there for you." Ollie's wedding ring glints dully in the fluorescents. Roy struggles to hold back tears. 

"I thought you were dead once," Ollie whispers. "Once when - when Dinah and Hal couldn't find you. It was only for a few hours, but - but I remember it like yesterday. And I can't imagine what it feels like to have that fear confirmed." 

"I feel like I'm falling apart, Ollie." The admission scrapes his throat raw. Ollie makes a low, comforting noise. "I have nothing left." 

"I know," Ollie breathes. "I know, and I - I'm so sorry." 

"What do I _do_?" Roy bangs his forehead against the glass, but it doesn't touch the gnawing ache in his chest. 

Ollie waits for a long moment. Taps his fingers against the glass. Roy looks into his eyes and doesn't know what he wants to find there, wishes that he was a kid again and he could run into his father's arms, wishes he could run to Brave Bow again, wishes he could curl up in Ollie's bed and be told everything's all right. 

"Let them take care of you." Quiet, gentle, _sincere_. "All of them. Dinah. Hal. Dick. Donna. Wally. Ga - " Ollie cuts himself off with a swallow and sighs. Roy shakes quietly with the pang of another loss, another friend, another fucking _injustice_. "Connor. Mia. Barry. Let them help you." 

Roy doesn't trust himself to speak. So he nods instead, presses his hand to Ollie's over the glass, and nods again, harder. Ollie smiles at him, his eyes damp in the corners. 

"I'm so proud of you," he says, and Roy does end up wiping his eyes. 

\-- 

The prosthetic is clunky and awkward. It _hurts_ when it connects to his nerves, and it never wields well. 

Whatever. He doesn't wear it much. He doesn't stay awake much. He takes his dwindling supply of pills, he sleeps, and he dreams. It's pleasant there, a permanent snapshot of _before_ , and he never wants to return to the _after_. Doesn't see why he has to, when the _before_ is everything he wants and needs and _loves_. He reads Lian bedtimes stories in his dreams, makes her pancakes on Saturday mornings, lets her sprinkle in the chocolate chips and mash the bananas. 

He doesn't remember much of the past week, honestly, because he spends most of it in his bedroom, gradually upping his dosage until he sleeps through most of the day. There's medical tests, and the prosthetic tests, and an attempt at taking Ollie's advice, but it's hard to let himself fall to pieces when he's still _connected_ to her, even if through a dreamscape. He's careful to only take two pills at a time, but he takes them more frequently - figures they'll flush out anyway, figures he's put his body through worse, and at least this time it gives him happy memories. 

When he's awake, when he's lost in thought and burdened with too many, he'll let his mind wander to a future he'll never have. Traces over the Navajo band on his left arm, is glad that at least he lost his _right_ arm, so he still has this. He would have introduced Lian to the Tachini, he knows, and he wonders if they would have accepted her as they accepted him. 

Knows they would have. Thinks fondly of the matching band she would have gained when she was old enough, when she was formally a member, and thinks of the family members he still has there, of Lian's many grandmothers and grandfathers and uncles and aunts that she'll never meet. 

Then further down, over the healed track marks dotting up and down his inner arm. Wonders how he would have explained it to Lian, eventually, how he would read out that chapter of his life. Hopes she got Jade's genes in that regard and not his addictive lean. 

Sometimes when he sleeps, he dreams of a much older Lian, a Lian with Jade's face and his eyes and a Navajo tattoo. Dreams of her in the long, dark nights, and goes to bed with a smile on his face. 

\-- 

The funeral is a private affair. Donna helps him get dressed for it. He doesn't wear the prosthetic. 

Dick appears at his other side when Donna walks him over, and they both hook an arm in his to keep him upright, at his request, and slowly walk him over to Lian's burial spot. 

His Navajo upbringing taught what wider America would regard as the cycle of life. That bodies would decompose, and become part of nature, and the spirit would become parts of different things. It would fuel trees, it would run in the streams, it would linger in the wind. 

So there's no coffin and no chemicals, to allow Lian's body to diffuse into nature. The dirt on top of the grave is a rich, fresh brown. 

Roy's Western upbringing means he chose a gravestone. It's a simple one. Lian Harper. The dates. _The best daughter in the world_ , in English. _Forever with us_ , in Navajo. 

Roy says a few words through a scratchy, rough throat. Dinah chimes in with agreement. It's a small gathering. Just Dick, Donna, Wally, Hal, Dinah, Barry, Connor, and Mia. All in quiet, black formal attire, with carnations in lapels and pinned to dresses to symbolise the love they all held for Lian. Roy hadn't wanted to invite the wider community. Hadn't wanted to deal with a crowd, hadn't - 

Really, he just wanted to take Ollie's advice. To fall apart and let these people pick up the pieces. 

He leaves a daisy on her grave. It was her favourite flower. 

\-- 

The arm is frustrating. It's also incredibly weird to get used to, and he constantly feels off-balance. Keeps swinging his shoulder to use his right arm, only to find it, obviously, _missing_. His mandated physical therapy helps. It calms him, focuses on healing the rest of his body from the stress of his arm, and it _works_. 

And because this _is_ a superhero base, there's a couple extra lessons in there on how to fall correctly, how to react if he's about to land on a very tender and painful stump, and how to twist his body to land on his back or his left side instead. 

Overall, his physical recovery going well. Apart from the whole nanomite issue, but he doesn't have the emotional capacity to fully deal with that just yet. Dick or Connor or Hal accompany him to physical therapy. Hal lets him try the ring on to try and simulate his right arm again. 

"It's...weird," Roy says, flexing the constructed arm. It's weird because he has to focus on making the ring on his left hand do it...but he _wants_ to flex the severed nerves in his stump, and it's a confusing mix of signals to his brain. "But I could get used to it." 

"It's not recommended," Hal says, brushing his fingers over the construct. "If you get too dependent on - an incorporeal arm, it'll just set you up for disappointment." 

"I know." Roy sighs and deconstructs the arm. "I miss my arm." It sounds silly out loud, but Hal doesn't laugh at him. 

"It sucks," he agrees, accepting the ring from Roy. He doesn't add a _but_ onto there, or try and offer platitudes. It's one of the reasons Roy likes him so much - when the going gets tough, Hal's not one to needlessly sugarcoat. He understands that Roy just wants to accept things as they are. 

"D'ya think I could get a new one down in the _arm_ oury?" Roy asks, raising an eyebrow, and Hal barks out a laugh so loud even Mid-Nite looks up from the corner. 

So, yeah. Physical's good. Helps him come to terms with missing a limb, and the clumsy prosthetic he has to replace it. 

Sometimes, though, the constant company feels like he's on suicide watch. He's not - feeling like _that_ , or at least likes to think so, but it is a little suspect when there's always someone hovering nearby, whenever he's not locked in his room and dreaming happily away. 

He kind of wants to scream about it, but he can't deny that it's kind of... _nice_ , to have people looking out for him, however unsubtly. The most unsubtle move yet is the Titans clambering into his quarters - graciously loaned out to him by S.T.A.R., with a bedroom and bathroom and a kitchenette and a living room and _everything_ even though he usually eats in the cafeteria - with a stack of movies, blankets, and bags of microwave popcorn. 

He ends up sandwiched between Dick and Wally on the sofa, Donna's legs stretched out over their laps as she tosses popcorn into her mouth. There's a lighthearted comedy playing on the screen, and Roy would roll his eyes and complain that he doesn't need to be coddled with happy media if it wasn't for the stress lines around Dick's eyes, the vibrating tension in Wally's shoulders slowly mirroring Barry's, the ragged edge of Donna's fingernails where she's been biting them. 

The comedy isn't just for his benefit, but he can pretend it is for his friends. 

"Okay, I _definitely_ think we should find the sequel for that," Wally says over the credits. Roy automatically reaches for more popcorn, then pauses when his stump moves, and focuses on moving his left arm instead to the bowl on Dick's lap. 

"I'm pretty sure it's a trilogy," Donna replies, licking butter off her fingers. 

"I thought there was a fourth," Dick adds. "With that RV chase." 

While they bicker, Roy finishes the popcorn and settles into the sofa, laughing along quietly when the argument turns into playful insults. No one changes the disc over, and no one moves from their comfortable spots until Donna stands up to announce a bathroom break and gets popcorn pelted at her retreating back. 

Roy swallows the last piece, and frowns when his throat runs dry. Water doesn't help it, and he tries shifting in his seat to see if it's just the angle. But shifting just alerts him to a deep-seated ache in his joints, fatigue pulling at his muscles in strange ways. 

"I can do another snack run if we're staying up," Wally volunteers. "Roy, you falling asleep yet?" 

"No - " Roy's jaw twinges when he talks, and when he lifts his gaze from the bowl to glance at the TV, he finds the light _piercing_. He blinks, and the world seems fuzzy at the edges, and the piercing light needles an ache right into his head, in the middle of his forehead, one so sharp and sudden that it makes him groan and press his fingers to his temple. 

"Roy? You all right?" Wally gently tilts his head up and Roy nods, closes his eyes against the wave of agony that wracks him. 

God, it _hurts_ , and he doesn't - he doesn't like the crowd, suddenly, doesn't like the sensation of fabric against his skin from Dick and Wally, doesn't like the _closeness_ , not enough space, not enough _air_ \- 

"I'm going to bed," he says abruptly. Dick frowns at him. Follows him when he stands up in a bid to get some air into his aching lungs. 

"Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine," Roy - doesn't _snap_ , but it's a close thing, and his head _pounds_ in ugly time with his heartbeat and he needs to - he just needs to get to his medicine cabinet and - 

"Hey, okay, that's fine," Wally interrupts, spreading his hands between them. "We can get together another time." 

"I'm _fine_ ," Roy repeats, because Dick and Donna and Wally are giving him these _concerned_ glances and his throat is dry and scratchy and his fingers tremble against his palm and he feels so uncomfortably _hot_ under all his clothes, then abruptly freezing. "I'm tired. I had therapy this morning." 

"Okay," Dick says, and steps back from him. "Do you want any help?" 

"No." Roy turns his back on them and heads to his bedroom door. "I'll see you tomorrow. You can let yourselves out." 

His bedroom is blessedly cool and silent when he shuts the door, leaning against it for a brief second as his head _spins_. It hurts to open his eyes, and it hurts to walk over to the en suite, and it hurts to open the cabinet but he manages it, and fatigue swirls around him like an ominous cloud, threatening to make him collapse right there on the floor. Nightmarish images of Lian drifts into view, images of the building, her body, horrible visions of death and destruction and decay and _Daddy, help!_ and _I miss you_ and - 

He takes three pills this time to dispel the visions quicker. They take a few minutes to kick in, but when they do, the relief is instantaneous. Familiar. His head stops throbbing. His temperature evens out. Drowsiness tugs at him, a welcome weight when he stumbles back into the bedroom and collapses onto his bed. 

_Daddy! You're back!_ greets him, in this dream. 

\-- 

"I missed seeing you around here." 

"Don't get used to it. I'm on a very strict leash," Roy says, easing into a kitchen chair. Wally huffs out a laugh and flicks a couple takeout menus on the table. 

"You got any dietary restrictions from 'Nite?" He asks. Roy shakes his head, and Wally grins wide, pushing an Italian menu towards him with a waggle of his eyebrows. Leonardo's. 

Roy's long past asking how his friends learnt his favourite places. And Leonardo's was comfortably out of the blast range, out in the suburbs, and Wally's ringing up their order over the phone before the condensation on Roy's soda evaporates. 

"You could just run and get it," Roy teases, leaning back in his chair. The kitchen is comfortable and familiar and refreshingly domestic compared to the S.T.A.R. Labs cafeteria. There's crooked magnets on the fridge, a mug tree in the corner of the counter, and a couple photos pinned to a corkboard beside scribbled recipe lists. 

He doesn't know how Wally convinced Barry to lend him his and Hal's Star City place for a night, but lo and behold, here they are, surrounded by quiet reminders of civilian life, of someone else's coffee stains and fondly thumbed takeout menus. 

The thought brings tears to his eyes, but he's gotten better with the random crying, over the past few weeks. Controls it more, now, able to hold it in until he's in a better place to let it all go. He remembers sticking pictures to his fridge, sticking finger painted art projects up with pride just to see Lian beam and clap in delight. Remembers buying her Disney mugs and locking up his takeout menus so he could cook good, healthy food for her himself. 

"I'd rather be with you," Wally says, with a fond, open smile that Roy's sorely missed. "Anyway, I've already taken my shoes off." 

"Thanks for inviting me," Roy says. "I kinda hate being cooped up at S.T.A.R. But I don't - " _have anywhere else to go_ " - exactly have much of a house anymore." 

Wally sighs. "Yeah. I'm sorry. It was already damaged when I got to it - " 

"Hey, no, _thank_ you," Roy interrupts, reaching over to grab Wally's wrist. "You picked up everything I would've." He still needs to sort through it, separate sentimentality from grief, decide what to do with muddy rain boots and old books, but he's not up to doing it yet. Won't be for a while, he thinks. 

He hasn't broached the topic of therapy yet - the non-physical kind. It's been offered and supported and encouraged and he knows it would do him a world of good but he can't - he just can't take that first step yet. Right now, he thinks he needs his friends more, needs familiarity, needs Donna teasing him about his terrible poker skills and Dick showing up to breakfast however late he was out the previous night and Wally just being _Wally_. 

"Of course," Wally says, and squeezes Roy's forearm. Then he grins, a ray of sunshine in Roy's otherwise cloudy world. 

"You wanna play something?" He asks, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to the living room. "Hal said we could use their Xbox." 

"Jesus, I haven't played a _video game_ in fucking ages," Roy groans, wiping a hand down his face. "You're gonna win whatever it is." 

"We'll do something with teamwork." Wally briefly slips his hand over Roy's, squeezes once, and then lets go to stand up. "C'mon - " 

Two knocks resound on the front door. Wally stiffens, his head whipping to look at the door quicker than Roy can comprehend. Roy clutches his glass tighter and stands up as well, haltingly following Wally over. 

"Are you expecting anyone?" He whispers. Wally shakes his head. 

"No one said they were dropping by," he murmurs back, his footsteps silent. 

"Someone for Barry? Hal?" 

Wally frowns and stops a couple feet from the door, so the shadow of his feet won't be visible from outside. 

"Everyone knows we're here tonight," he replies, and leans across the gap to peer into the peephole. His frown deepens, and when he pulls away, he looks deeply confused. Looks at Roy, glances back at the door. 

"I - it's Cheshire," he says. Roy's eyes widen. _Cheshire_? He'd sent word of Lian's passing, back when it happened, through a haze of painkillers and grief, had typed it up as succinctly as he could, told her where he was burying her, but he hadn't expected her to actually be able to _show up_. 

It's why she had handed Lian off to Roy in the first place. Too busy, her lifestyle too dangerous, and she loved Lian too much to put her through all that. Said Roy could give her stability. Domesticity. A home. Something Roy had laughed at at the time, given the marks on his arm, given the scars on his chest, given _everything_ , but he'd done his best anyway. 

And it still ended like this. An ugly part of him says that's why Jade's here now, to rip him a new one for letting Lian get hurt, for letting her _die_. 

"Open the door," Roy whispers, setting his glass down on the entry hall table. Wally obeys, and Roy tenses up at the sight of Jade on the other side. She's dressed in jeans and an inconspicuous hoodie, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have her poison nails primed and ready to cut his throat. It just means she didn't want to be sighted. 

Then she lifts her head, and Roy can see the twinkle of tears in her eyes even underneath the hood. 

"What happened?" She asks, her voice wavering, thin. As hollow and hurt as Roy _feels_ , and his heart clenches in sympathy. He glances to Wally, who nods to him. _Your choice_. 

"Come in," he says eventually, gesturing to the sofa. Jade pads across the threshold and, to his surprise, hugs him immediately. 

It takes him a moment to reciprocate, and he melts into her with a sigh, pulling her hood down to rest his face in her hair and circle his arm around her middle. She may be a deadly assassin, but he'd been in love with her once, and her hair still smells like coconut shampoo, and he can't bring himself to keep his guard up around Lian's grieving mother. 

"I'm sorry," he breathes into her hair. "I'm so sorry, Jade." 

"I am, too," she whispers. Sniffles into his shoulder. Across from them, Wally awkwardly looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. Roy squeezes Jade to his chest and exhales shakily, raw and rough and pained all over. 

"I thought you'd come to kill me," he murmurs. She chuckles wetly into his shirt, unpoisoned nails clutching at the fabric. 

"You don't deserve it," she replies. "Can you - I want - " Sniffles, wipes her eyes on his shirt. "Can you tell me what happened? I saw the news, but - I want to hear it from _you_." 

Roy nods, glances at Wally. "Yeah, I can tell you." 

"I can leave," Wally offers. Jade turns her head to look at him, as if she's only just noticed his presence. Squints at him, and Roy can see the gears turning in her head. 

"You're one of his hero friends," she says quietly. Wally nods. 

"He was here, too," Roy tells her. 

"You can stay," she decides. "Please. I just want to know - everything." 

So they get to the sofa. Wally finds another drink, settles in on Jade's other side, and she leans into Roy while they retell the grim story. About Roy's arm, about Lian. About her burial, about the gravestone. About the _pain_ and the _grief_ and the way Jade's tremble mirrors the crumbling in Roy's chest. She looks so, so far from Cheshire, now, and much more like who Roy met all those years ago, like an echo of himself. 

"I'm sorry," Roy repeats, afterwards, when there's a pile of tissues on the coffee table from all three of them and the Italian is keeping warm in the oven. "You gave her to me to keep her safe, and I couldn't - " 

"It's not your fault," Jade insists, pressing a hand to his chest. "You didn't know this would happen. None of you did." She rubs a thumb in the corner of her eye and doesn't try to hide the shake of her shoulders. Glances at both him and Wally, and the way Roy's hand intertwines with hers on her thigh. 

"Can you - tell me about her?" She asks softly, _brokenly_. "I got all the updates, but I - I want to hear more." The updates Roy had sent, dutifully, every weekend, to let Jade know how Lian was doing in school, to let her know about Lian's obsession with mermaids and the subsequent weekend trip with Garth to Atlantis. 

"Yeah, _yes_ , of course I can," he says, disentangling their hands to curl his arm around her shoulders. Smiles sadly at Wally over her head, turns his hand over, and Wally reaches up to press their palms together by Jade's shoulder, quiet and forlorn. 

He doesn't even know where to start. There's so much to say, so _much_ to catch Jade up on, so many things that slipped between the cracks in the updates, so many tiny, insignificant things that now seem pricelessly precious. 

"She looked a lot like you," Wally says gently. "And she was - fierce. Stubborn, you could say." 

Jade snorts. "Definitely our kid, then." 

Roy nods and tips his head against hers. 

"I remember when she learnt how to tie her shoelaces," Wally continues, leaning into them. "It was on these, like, white sneakers with rainbows on the side that she had practically _begged_ Roy to get her, because they lit up when she walked, and she tied the bow all wrong and knotted up but she was so proud of it." 

Roy lifts his eyes to lock with Wally's, beaming quietly. He remembers that day, because Lian was so excited and Wally had stayed over because of a mission and - and he had no clue Wally even _remembered_ that, had even registered it as anything beyond a child's excitement. 

"I nearly had to cut those laces off," Roy adds, to both of them. Jade chuckles quietly. "I couldn't untie them for the _life_ of me, I had to call in Donna." 

"Super strength, right?" Jade asks. Roy nods. 

"She managed to untangle them somehow, and Lian knotted them right up again the next day." 

Jade laughs, but it comes out more like a sob. Roy hugs her tighter, presses his mouth to her hair. 

"She was doing really well in school," he murmurs. "Her teachers _loved_ her. Said she was the happiest kid they'd ever seen." Sucks in a ragged breath. "She asked for a bike last Christmas - you remember the pictures?" 

Jade nods. 

"I took the training wheels off a couple weeks ago," Roy continues. "I was gonna take her out to the city park next weekend and - " the tears come silently, but strongly. Jade squeezes him just as silently and strongly. 

And they talk. Roy dredges up happy memories, Wally chimes in with his own stories, and Jade laughs and cries along with them, a strange sort of truce settling over the apartment as the night wears on. It feels almost normal, for once, chatting together on the sofa - except completely odd, because Jade has a soft side but she doesn't show a _vulnerable_ side often, and now it's exposed fully, like a raw nerve, like the gaping hole in Roy's chest and the stop-start healing of his arm. 

\-- 

Roy takes Jade to his bedroom in S.T.A.R. to look over the boxes of Lian's stuff. It hurts to open them, it hurts so much to unfold her old Halloween costumes and her rainbow shoes and her hairbrushes and her toys, and Roy's nowhere near ready to do it, but Jade helps. It helps. having her there, and it helps, knowing she won't judge him for choking up or crying or needing to look away for minutes at a time. 

For once, his bedroom isn't a stale, unfeeling rented space where the only peace he gets is when he's asleep. For once, it feels like Lian's there when he's _awake_ , walking through memories and thumbing fondly at old pictures - the ones he had up on the fridge, pinned there by faded magnets and repurposed paperclips. 

"Thank you," Jade whispers, her fingers trembling delicately around a photo of the three of them, taken when she had dropped Lian off to him. Even now, time has mellowed the turbulent memory, and Roy looks on it with fondness. 

"She had that in her bedroom," he says, running a finger over the folded corner. "You can keep it." 

Jade's eyes flick towards the small pile of memories gathered by her knees - an amicable, ongoing split of Lian's stuff, for each of them to take home. 

"No," she says eventually, thrusting the photo towards Roy. "It's yours." 

Roy gingerly pushes the photo back and smiles. "I have a copy in my wallet." 

This time when Jade looks up at him, her eyes are shining with unshed tears. 

"I'm surprised you didn't cut me out," she says, her mouth curling around a quiet laugh. Roy shakes his head and smooths a fingertip over Jade and Lian in the photo. 

"I could never," he admits. "I know it wasn't ideal, but - we still _had_ something. You were important to me." 

"Once," Jade agrees. Roy leans against her shoulder. 

"Still," he corrects. "Just in a different way." 

Jade sets the photo on her pile - with other photos, with a couple of Lian's toys, with a charm bracelet, with a well-loved book. 

"Thank you," Roy breathes, "for giving me a chance with her. I know it was hard to leave her." 

"You gave her a better life than I ever could," Jade replies, leaning her head against his. "I made the right decision." 

The words warm something in Roy's chest, something long buried and overly sentimental. Tears prick at his eyes, but this time they're wistful, nostalgic. Not the overwhelming grief and fear and pain he's been carrying around for the last few weeks. 

He looks at his own pile, of hair clips and bedtime stories and art projects and the stuffed bird she slept with every night. 

"You're stronger than I ever could be," he says. "I couldn't have given her up for the world." 

\-- 

Roy doesn't wear the arm when he escorts Jade to his old house. It's scheduled for demolition sometime in the next few days, along with the rest of this destroyed street, but Hal and Barry had made a couple gracious arrangements for Roy to introduce Jade to it, however briefly. 

He hadn't intended to ever visit it again, and stepping over the threshold makes a fresh wave of grief wash over him, but he tries to keep himself together. If not for himself, then for Jade, as he glosses over the kitchen and the living room to show her Lian's room on the next floor. 

Jade sits on the broken bedframe, right where Roy had sat mere weeks ago, and this time, Roy takes on Dinah's role, hugging Jade to his chest as she cries into his shirt. He points out details in the room as calmly as he can, from where he used to do Lian's hair every morning, to where her box of stuffed animals was, to her favourite reading spot in the corner. Shows Jade pictures on his phone from when the house was standing, shows her his whole album of Lian, promises to forward every single photo he has on to her even though she already has most of them. 

Next is the burial site. Jade quietly watches the scenery while they take the path up the hill. Her hand is a comforting weight in Roy's, familiar yet new. 

"Her favourite," Jade says when they come across the small daisy field, rippling in the wind. The breeze ruffles her hair when she crouches to pick a few, a delicate bouquet wound between careful fingers, and Roy forgets all over again that she's an _assassin_. Right now, she just looks young - too young for this kind of grief, and too young for her burdens, and heartbreakingly similar to what he sees in the mirror every morning. 

"I'm sorry I didn't wait for you," Roy says at the grave, watching Jade kneel down and place the daisies tenderly at the gravestone. "I didn't know you were coming." 

"Neither did I." Jade swallows thickly and brushes her fingers over the overturned dirt. "I had to pull in some favours to get to come here." She whispers something to the grave that Roy politely tunes out, turning his gaze to the birds circling above, rising up on the gust of warm wind from inland. 

Up here, Star City seems untouchable. The buildings closest to the hill are suburb houses, no bigger than a couple floors, and the further into the city you go, the higher the rooftops get, cresting into an impressive horizon line that Roy would be in awe at any other time. 

Now, though, the view is broken by the jagged point of a star burnt into rubble, thrusting towards them like an ugly scar. Roy scowls at the reminder. He thinks, rather bitterly, that Prometheus deserved what he got, and Electrocutioner deserves worse - 

but then he breathes, and reminds himself that killing never helps. It _never_ helps. Prometheus wasn't targeting Lian. He was targeting whole _cities_. It's easy to forget that, in the midst of his personal grief, but Prometheus's target was so much bigger than all of them. 

It's hard to stop his thoughts wandering to other, darker realities. Where they didn't stop Prometheus in time, where he managed to hit every single city he wanted, hit the heroes right where it hurts. Where so, so many more League members would be mourning just like Roy is. Where their loved ones didn't make it. 

He hates what happened, and he _hates_ Prometheus and Electrocutioner with a rage hot enough to burn the sun, but he's glad they could stop the attack. He's glad no other cities have to deal with this amount of grief and _loss_ in a single day. 

Jade snaps a photo of the gravestone. Roy helps her up and thinks of the pills rattling in his medicine cabinet back at S.T.A.R. 

"I wish I could see her again," Jade whispers. "Just to say goodbye." 

Roy slips his hand in hers. "I don't know what you believe," he says. "But I think she's in a happy place now. I - my family taught me that she belongs to nature, now." 

Jade hums quietly. "That's nice." Squeezes his hand. "I think I'll believe that, too." 

\-- 

"I suppose I should go," Jade says, hugging her hoodie to herself on Roy's sofa. She's been sleeping in another S.T.A.R. spare room over the past few days, but Roy's always had room for her. 

"Do you have to?" 

She fixes him with a quiet, curious look. 

"I can't stay," she says, but it sounds regretful. 

"Not forever," Roy answers. "But - there's some people I'd like you to meet." 

Jade blinks. "One of your families?" 

Roy nods. She frowns, brow knitting in puzzlement. 

"I thought you wanted to keep us separate," she says, her voice soft and cautious. "To keep them safe." _From me_ goes unspoken, but Roy hears it anywhere. 

"I was wrong," he confesses. "I was - I trust you, Jade." 

"You shouldn't." 

"We've been through too much together," Roy counters. "I don't care if I shouldn't. I do." 

Jade's eyes are the colour of rain. Cold and unfeeling and hostile, maybe, to a stranger, guarded and cautious to her friends. To her enemies. But Roy's always liked the rain, and her gaze is nothing but honest gratitude, nothing but trust, and he thinks even if she does go back on her unspoken word to keep him safe, it'll have all been worth it. 

"They know I want you to meet them," he says. "They want to meet you, too." 

"I think I've met one or two of them before," Jade says, a half-smile on her face. Roy reaches over to grab her hand, chuckling softly. 

"But you don't _know_ them," he continues. "Not like you know me." 

Jade hesitates, but then she nods, her hair falling like a curtain over her shoulder. 

"Not like I know you," Roy finishes, and Jade smiles for the first time in days. 

\-- 

"Jade, this is Connor. Connor, Jade." 

"It's nice to meet you." Connor greets her with a wide, genuine smile and a hand held out to shake. Jade takes it nervously - not that it shows, but Roy could recognise her slight tells a mile off - and grins back, sizing him up with her eyes. 

"It's - nice to meet you, too," she says. "Like this." 

Connor laughs lightly. "Gotta say, it's better than last time." 

Roy had texted the group chat to gather everybody in Mia's place, and his family, being his family, had even busted out snacks and drinks, like it's some sort of _reception_ , except with soda instead of alcohol and chips and salsa instead of hor d'oeuvres. The weather seemed to come around as well, the sun shining brightly through open windows to drape over the furniture. 

Overall, it's a much more cheerful event than Roy expected. Everyone's stopped by to offer apologies, to offer comfort, to offer stories, and a surprising amount of hugs later, the mood has relaxed into a more friendly one. Jade gets along surprisingly well with Mia and Dick, who's milling about in the corner like a double agent even though Roy damn _invited_ him. Donna is more social, flitting between groups with a smile on her face and a few friendly words to Roy, and Wally is picking determinedly at the snack table, talking animatedly with Dinah before Dinah gets pulled away by Connor. Roy beckons him over with a laugh when Wally turns the _I've-been-abandoned_ puppy dog eyes on him. 

"Wally," Roy says, gesturing to the blur that comes to a stop in front of them. 

"A Flash," Jade says with obvious delight, smiling at him. "Are you - I mean, there's one with a cowl and one without - " 

"I'm the one without," Wally laughs. "I'm the younger model." He lays a hand on Jade's arm, and she doesn't even flinch. Roy's pleasantly surprised. 

"Are you enjoying yourself?" Wally asks, fixing her with that _look_ of his, like he can see the gears working in your head. "I know they can be a lot, the Arrows - " 

"It's actually pretty great," Jade replies, nodding to the people scattered about the small living room. "I'm enjoying meeting more of Lian's family." She stumbles on the name, but no one comments on it. "It - really helps." 

"Good." Wally squeezes her arm and lets go, turning to Roy. "How're you?" 

"I'm okay," he says, and then a voice interrupts them. 

"Hey, Jade!" Dinah calls from another group, waving her over. She grins at Roy. "Sorry, can we borrow her?" 

"It's up to her," he answers with a smile, and Jade hesitates for a moment before slipping from his side with a polite _excuse me, I guess_ to Wally. 

Roy watches Dinah step back to envelope Jade into the little circle talking, and something close to _pride_ swells in his chest. He's always been a family man, despite the universe's attempts to take that away from him, and he's glad to see two parts of his life melting together so seamlessly. 

"So, _are_ you all right?" Wally asks, looking at him more seriously. 

"I - yeah, I think I'm fine," Roy admits. He goes to rub the back of his neck, then stops when he just twitches the shoulder above his stump. His other hand curls tighter around his glass of water. "It's just - a lot of memories." 

Wally nods, and his hand flickers in mid-air, hesitant, before he rests it on Roy's forearm. 

"Just don't burn yourself out," he says, and there's something oddly thick in his voice, something heavier in the weight of his gaze on Roy's. Then just as quickly as it appeared, it vanishes, and a sneaky little smile steals onto his face instead. 

"I'm glad you're doing okay." Not better, not good, just _okay_. Wally understands him better than most, and Roy returns the smile in full force, bumping his arm against Wally's side. 

"Thanks for coming," he says, turning to glance at Jade with Dinah and Mia and Donna, slotting smoothly in like she belongs there. 

Their lives are too different, Roy knows, for Jade to stay and try and forge something from the remnants of their friendship, reformed over their shared grief. They've been on amiable terms for the last few years, but communication has mostly been the updates on Lian or the occasional video call when Jade made time. Always on Lian's birthday, and usually every couple months, but she had always responded to the updates with one thing: _tell her I love her_. 

Roy wonders if they could have managed it together, in another universe. If they stayed together from the start, or if they got _back_ together later, and if they could have settled down with each other. Started another little family. Retired. 

Wally crackles with lightning beside him, waving at Dick from across the room, and Roy's idle daydreams vanish without a trace. Donna catches his eye and offers him a friendly smile, raising her drink to him, and Roy - Roy doesn't think he could have given it all up if he tried. 

"Of course I came," Wally snorts, smiling at him. "You invited us." It's soft, gentle, like he'd come running whenever Roy asks, and, sure, maybe that's Wally's _thing_ , but he doesn't have to make it sound so - so _fond_. So _easy_. Like it's second nature. 

Like he hasn't done it a thousand times over for them and a thousand times again and never seems to grow tired of just showing up. 

"Still, thanks," Roy repeats. 

"Anytime," Wally replies, and sounds like he means it. 

\-- 

Two days later, Jade appears at Roy's front door with small duffel half packed with Lian's things. Her hair is pulled back into a neat ponytail, draped over one shoulder of the hoodie she arrived in. 

Roy leans against the doorframe and goes to cross his arms - pauses, and drops his one arm uselessly a second later before tucking it into his jeans' pocket. 

"Thanks for everything," she says, her eyes turned up to meet his. "It meant a lot to me, Roy." 

"Thanks for visiting," Roy replies. Jade nods, sighs, and glances down the hallway. Then she leans down to grab the bag and tosses it over her shoulder, straightening up to nod curtly at Roy. 

"I hope your arm heals okay." 

"I hope I regrow it," Roy jokes, and even Jade can't help a huff of laughter at that. 

"Stay in touch," he adds lightly, but Jade freezes, her eyebrows raising. 

"In touch?" 

Roy shrugs his left shoulder, forcing himself to stay casual. "Yeah. I wanna keep in contact with you." 

"I - had assumed, without Lian - " 

"Me too," he admits. Before he can think to stop himself, he reaches out and takes her wrist in hand. "But I don't want this to be the end of _us_. I'm not askin' for a phone call, Jade, just a postcard every now and then." 

Jade's eyes dart away to the bland hallway, flitting over the doors, the carpet, before landing on Roy's face once more. Her mouth slants up in the beginning of a teasing grin. 

"I hope you don't mean _us_ in a romantic sense," she teases. Roy rolls his eyes, but allows himself to laugh with her. Jade's expression softens with her next words. "But are you sure? I know we're not - we only talked because of Lian." 

"We were friends once," Roy reminds her. "I want to have that again." 

Jade considers him with eyes like flint. Calculating, sharp, piercing. But he's not lying, and there's no ulterior motives. 

"That'd be nice," she says eventually, relaxing again. "I've - missed you." 

"You too." Roy grins and retrieves his phone from his pocket. "Here, I'll give you all my personal numbers." 

When that's sorted, Jade only lingers for a few more moments and another long hug before they say their goodbyes. This time, when she walks away, it's not dread and guilt mounting Roy's chest - but rather, a gentle, but good sorrow, blanketing the whole affair like cotton. Accepting that this time, they've parted on friendly terms, and this isn't the end of whatever branch of Roy's life Jade encompasses. He's got a lot of branches - some good, gleaming, and some like the ugly jab of the Star explosion. 

Jade's one of the good ones, now, tucked in right alongside Lian's memory. 

\-- 

The days after Jade pass like syrup and stick in his throat just the same, clogged up with words he can't say and sentiments he doesn't want. The rest of Lian's stuff gets boxed up to sit in the corner of his living room, and the pile of things he split with Jade settles into the box on his bedside table. It helps him feel closer to her. 

What remains of his right arm thumps dully with a new low, constant pain from the nanomite treatment Mid-Nite had offered - and Roy had taken, after a sleepless, painful night of throbbing nerves and aching muscles. They don't know if it will work, but it hurts like a _bitch_ , and Mid-Nite had allowed him a couple of stronger painkillers before leaving the med-bay. 

They've long worn off by now, so Roy turns to his bedside table and grabs the familiar orange bottle to pour himself out two of his regular painkillers - thinks for a moment, then adds a third when a particularly harsh pulse of pain ripples through his stump. 

They make him drowsy, and they dull the pain down to a low-level ache, and with a grunt and a sigh, he settles onto his back to blink sleepily up at the plain ceiling. There's a strip of moonlight creeping through his curtains, painting a wedge of the ceiling in a wash of white, and as the slow minutes pass, the edges of the wedge grow blurry. He blinks, and they remain fuzzy. 

When he closes his eyes again, they don't open. Lian is awash in sunshine when he meets her. 

\-- 

"You could have a chrome one," Wally says, pointing to the metal colour squares lined up on the wall. 

"Or a much more reasonable brushed steel one," Dick adds, glancing across Roy to Wally. 

Roy had asked them to help him try and pick out what he wants in a new prosthetic. Victor had woken him up earlier at a crisp two p.m. to tell him of some upgrades they're going to try for it. It won't be the final arm - he won't have that for a couple months, at _least_ , and not until they've fixed his nanomite problem - but it'll be another step closer. Less clunky, less clumsy, and more suited to what he actually _wants_ from a prosthetic limb. 

"I think chrome would just angle the sun into my eyes all the fuckin' time," Roy says. "And I hate brushed steel." 

"What about keeping the gold?" Dick suggests, his fingers brushing Roy's side as he leans across to point at the gold square. Victor had kindly laid out an array of different materials on the wall for him to choose from, but there's so many options. 

"It suits you," Wally agrees. "I like the blue, though." 

"It'd clash with your hair," Dick jokes, and Roy puffs out a weak laugh. 

"It'd match your eyes," Wally counters with a charming little grin. 

Roy doesn't know how to respond to the suggestions when they continue talking, hasn't this whole time apart from familiar, witty comebacks, but he just doesn't _know_. It feels incongruous, to stand here - _shopping_ , for all things, for a _colour_ for his new _prosthetic_ _arm_ because he's missing an _entire arm_. It feels _wrong_ , and he can't express the curdling rage in his gut but it threatens to claw out of his throat every time he thinks about it too hard. 

Like this is just a fucking toy, like he hasn't just lost a major part of his body - a major part of his _skills_ , because he can't fucking _shoot_ with his prosthetic and - and there's so many colours up on the wall - different shades of grey, plastic white, a sleek black, various depths of red and blue and gold and bronze - 

"I don't know what I want," Roy interrupts with a frown, tearing his gaze from the squares. His arm hurts. "I don't know why it _matters_." His outburst silences Dick and Wally, but only for a brief moment. 

"You don't have to do this now," Dick says gently, but Roy's already fighting to swallow down the burning in his chest and failing miserably. He feels hot all over and his arm _hurts_ and it's all so fucking _unfair_. 

"I don't want to fucking do it _ever_ ," he snaps, and when he steps back from the wall, Wally follows to put a hand on his left shoulder. Dick keeps his space but hovers uselessly at his right, and Roy _hates_ lashing out he fucking _hates_ \- 

His head throbs in time with his arm, and it's only a matter of time before he stumbles. His throat drags dry on his next swallow, and his mouth fills with cotton, and he can't _think_ past the sudden, pulsing pain in his head, throbbing at his temples, beating in harsh time with his heartbeat and this is like the movie night all over again, fuck. 

Wally catches him before he can stumble backwards, an arm around his waist and gently easing him onto the bench a couple steps behind them - Dick presses a hand to his forehead and cheek, and his hands are so _wonderfully_ cool. Roy leans gratefully into them, closing his eyes against the stabbing points of light trying to needle into his brain. 

"You're burning up," Dick murmurs. "Jesus, Roy - " 

"It's fine," Roy lies, waving his hand in the air. "New treatment. Nanomite killer. Should be finished in a coupla days." 

"We should report to Mid-Nite about symptoms," Wally says. "What else hurts?" 

"It's _fine_ ," Roy insists, tries to quell the rising panic in his voice. He doesn't need to see Mid-Nite, not like this, not in _withdrawal_ \- 

"Do you want to go back to your room?" Dick asks, pressing the cool back of his hand to Roy's other cheek. 

"Yeah," Roy whispers. Swallows down the panicked lump in his throat. "No - no superspeed though." 

Wally huffs out a chuckle for his benefit. "Wasn't gonna," he assures him, and hooks Roy's arm over his shoulders to help him stand up. Dick's hands push carefully at Roy's side to keep him upright, one planted on his ribs and the other on his back. 

They keep the lights off when they settle him into bed. Roy feels simultaneously drowsy and awfully awake, like he's fuzzy at the edges but glaringly bright in the middle, so bright it _hurts_ , like looking at snow in the sunshine. Dick presses a cool washcloth over his face, and Wally speeds away to return with a glass of water and saltine crackers, and Roy wants to stop them, wants to send them away and get them to stop treating symptoms for a problem he knows how to fix, for the solution that his fingers itch to curl around, hidden in his bedside table just inches away. 

He gets a couple minutes of privacy when he goes to the bathroom, and takes his actual prescription bottle of painkillers out of the medicine cabinet to swallow three in one go. A few minutes later, hands curled around cool porcelain, he starts to feel some semblance of human again, and the throbbing in his head silences. 

He falls blissfully asleep holding Wally's hand, with Dick perched comfortably on his other side. 

\--

The days are short, and the nights shorter. No one really stays up past midnight at S.T.A.R. unless it's an emergency. Which is why it's a surprise to hear a knock on his door this late at night. 

Roy pauses, painkillers halfway to his mouth, and regards the feet shuffling underneath his bedroom door. That's not unusual - he's got a whole apartment, but he's given most people an open invitation to walk into the main area whenever. 

Whoever it is knocks again. Roy sighs and tips the pills back into the bottle before stowing it in the drawer. 

"Yeah, come in," he calls. The door cracks open to reveal Hal, still in uniform. 

"Hey, Roy," he says, but there's a tense line to his mouth that makes Roy suspect this isn't just a social visit. 

"What's up?" He scoots to sit up properly in the bed. Hal sighs, and the facsimile of his smile falls with it. 

"Can I talk to you?" 

Roy frowns. "Sure?" 

Hal runs a hand through his hair and lets the door fall shut behind him to come over to the bed. The uniform dissipates as he perches on a spot by Roy's feet, leaving him in just a T-shirt and jeans. Without the mask, Roy can see the crease of his brow, the consternation in his expression. 

"How are you?" Hal asks, setting a gentle hand on his leg. His ring gleams in the silver strip of moonlight. 

"I'm okay," Roy lies. Hal nods, and seems to think over his next words carefully. 

"I know I'm not...here as much as I want to be," he says, "but if there's anything you want to talk about, you know I'm here for you, right?" It's soft, genuine, and digs right at the tender space between Roy's ribs, where heartbreak and regret crash together like waves in the night. He doesn't deserve Hal's kindness - he doesn't deserve Hal's _care_ , but Hal made it clear years ago that he was choosing Roy, and he'd chose him over and over and _over_ again, even when everybody else had written him off. 

"I know," Roy says. Hal studies him for a moment longer, then sighs quietly. 

"I know about the painkillers," he says. So quiet and so gentle, and it feels like an anvil's just landed on Roy's heart, crushing it to the bottom of his diaphragm. 

"What?" He whispers, but he can't - he can't _lie_ to Hal, never has been able to, never _wants_ to, and it's so hard to keep the truth tucked behind his teeth because the pills are the only thing helping him sleep at night and without them it's just nightmares and horror and death and destruction and the pain of his arm tenfold and the pain of Lian twentyfold - 

"Mid-Nite noticed you took another bottle," Hal tells him. "He doesn't know anything, but he asked me to check on you." 

Roy knew he was running out of time, out of chances. This is the third extra bottle he's stolen - he _knows_ Mid-Nite would notice, he knows he would bring it up, but he hadn't quite expected it to be like _this_. 

"And I - noticed." Hal swallows thickly. "I recognised it." _From before_ , he doesn't say, but Roy hears it anyway. 

"I want to help you," Hal finishes, and Roy's chest cracks open, a great, yawning abyss of things he keeps buried and things he hides and things he only sees in his dreams. 

He feels raw, turned inside-out, and the hitch of his breath must give him away, because Hal's face takes on that softly concerned expression of his, gentle enough to feel comforting and trusting enough to not feel patronising, and Roy could cry with the weight of that gaze, can feel his lungs expand and press into the crack, filling up space he doesn't have, and - 

"You don't have to talk about it - " 

"I can't sleep," Roy blurts out. His hand tightens in the sheets pooled at his waist. "I can't - sleep." 

"Okay," Hal says, kind and understanding. He rubs a thumb over Roy's blanketed leg in a slow sweep. 

"I see her," Roy whispers. His voice cracks pathetically in the middle. "I can't - Hal, it's the only way I can _see_ Lian. I don't want to - " stop? give her up? relive it in a hundred different nightmares and a hundred different daydreams? 

He doesn't realise he's shaking until Hal hums out a soothing noise and squeezes his leg, comforting and paternal and supportive like he always has been. More subdued than last time, when he'd gently pried the bottle out of Roy's fingers and held his hands and told him drowning his sorrows wasn't a good idea. Roy had shouted. Stood his ground. Screamed at Hal to get out and fuck off and Hal had calmly refused each insult, each misdirection, until Roy had nothing left inside him. Hollow, scooped out. Craving an addiction to _something_ , _anything_ , strong enough to resist the drugs but impaling himself on broken bottles instead. 

It was Hal that had sat with him those first few horrible nights, Hal that had carved out so much time to just _be_ with him, and Hal that had nudged a business card with an AA address on it and spoken very quietly, very delicately, about his own time there. It was easier to swallow coming from someone who had already gone through the program. Maybe that's why Ollie never seemed to know how to help. 

It was always Hal that had noticed. 

"I miss her." It's more air than sound, broken and jagged at the edges of his rough voice, and Roy's chest seizes up turbulent when he tries to think of all the things he's _supposed_ to do, supposed to grieve and move on and - and how is he supposed to just _do_ that, just _do_ things, like movie nights and picking out a colour for his arm and normal, _routine_ things. 

When he sucks in his next breath, it exhales as a sob. 

"Of course you do," Hal says, scooting up the bed to hold Roy's hand instead. Roy shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut against the brimming tears threatening to fall. "Roy, it's - it's not uncommon, to try and turn to something else - " 

"I can't _sleep_ ," he repeats, his voice rough and raw. Trembling, just like his fingers in Hal's. "Please, the dreams are all I have, Hal, I can't - I _can't_ lose her again." His words hiccup into a sob, and Hal tugs him in by the arm to encourage him to rest on his shoulder. It's one of the uglier breakdowns Roy's had since waking up in the medbay, sniffling into Hal's shirt with painful, hiccuping sobs that rattle his clogged throat. 

Hal, ever-patient, loops an arm around his chest and strokes his hair and murmurs soft, nonsensical comfort against Roy's temple, holding him like he's sixteen all over again and curled up small in Dinah's bathroom and _terrified_. He's just as scared now, scared to relapse, scared to recover, scared, so fucking scared of having to rip himself free from the anchor of grief keeping him pinned. It's not like pulling a Band-Aid off, the rip, more like a slow, much less painful peeling, but it still snags and tugs and hurts at all stages. 

Roy doesn't know how long he stays there, buried safely in the crook of Hal's neck and shoulder, but when he's all out of tears, there's still moonlight touching the edges of the bed. He feels run ragged. Hollow. Cracked open and uncaring of how to begin to stitch himself back together. 

"I'm sorry," Hal says. "I'm so sorry, Roy." His voice sounds thick, too, but Roy doesn't dare peek at his face. Instead of words, he just untangles his hand from Hal's shirt to slap clumsily at the bedside table drawer and take out the extra bottle of painkillers. He shoves it unceremoniously into Hal's hand, fingers shaking around the plastic. Hal squeezes him tighter. 

"I can't sleep," Roy whispers. "I can't - without them, all I see is - I have nightmares about her." His one prescribed pill doesn't touch his dreams anymore. _Dependency_ , a nasty voice whispers into his ear, one he dismisses with a hard swallow. 

"I know," Hal breathes. "It - it'll be rough for the first few days. But it'll get better, Roy." 

"Doesn't feel like it ever will." 

"Trust me on this." Hal picks up Roy's wrist and presses a thumb against his terrified pulse. 

Roy tries to swallow the lump in his throat and fails. He knows Hal's right, he _knows_ \- it's exactly why he asked him to be his sponsor, all those years ago, when he was staring down the 12-Step program and shitscared for his future. Hal _understands_ it. He _gets_ it. He's possibly the only person Roy would ever trust to guide him back to a better path. 

"Okay," he mumbles. "I do." When Hal makes to pull away, Roy grabs his wrist, a sudden panic rising in his throat. 

"I'm scared," he blurts out, when Hal pauses. "I'm really fuckin' scared." 

Hal doesn't miss a beat. "Do you want me to stay?" 

Part of Roy still feels guilty for asking Hal, _Green Lantern_ , to stay with him to ward off - _nightmares_ , of all things. Hal has duties, he has responsibilities, he's pulled in so many directions and Roy is just selfish enough to pull him in this one, too. Hal pulls back from the embrace and pokes his forehead. 

"Stop," he says gently, the hint of a smile in his voice. "I can hear you overthinking." 

"Sorry." 

"Don't apologise." Hal does smile at him, then, a fond, soft curve. "Don't worry about me. Do you want me to stay?" 

Roy rubs his hand over his mouth and admits it to himself with a shuddering breath first, then speaks. "Please." 

"Okay." Simple as anything. Hal leans over to grab the chair by Roy's bedside and tug it closer, then move to sit in while Roy wipes his eyes and settles on his back underneath the warm sheets. 

He feels a little childish when he turns his palm up towards Hal, but a lot safer when Hal easily reaches down to hold his hand. Roy's always liked grounding, physical touch - likes it from Dinah, from Connor, from Mia, from Ollie. Dick. Donna. Wally. Jade, when she was briefly here. From Hal, who gives it so freely and so forgivingly, like Roy could never be asking for too much. Unconditional. 

"Will you still be here in the morning?" Roy asks. Hal squeezes his hand and smiles. 

"I'll be here all night, kid." 

\-- 

Physical therapy is put on hold while Roy recovers. Hal stays with him whenever he can. After the worst two days, Roy asks for his friends, and Hal enlists Dick, Donna, and Wally to keep him company as well. 

It doesn't escape Roy's notice how they seem to take shifts with him, always smoothly switching off with each other so he's never alone, but he doesn't complain. Hal had assured him he hadn't told them anything, so Roy's not too worried about them going overboard. But it is a refreshing change of pace, to wake up to Donna painting her nails on his bed and chatting idly about her latest fight with some sort of alien. To Dick introducing him to video games he missed while he was busy juggling Red Arrow and Lian and Star City. To Wally bringing him breakfast in bed and stealing strips of bacon with his bare fingers. 

"...and meetings are such a _mess_ nowadays, because half of us are still trying to fix the city and the other half are in space, and it's honestly a miracle that we're meeting at _all_. I think Clark needs to learn how to use a group chat or something, it'd be a lot quicker." Wally muffles himself with his newest piece of bacon, wiping greasy fingers on the napkin pinned underneath Roy's plate. 

"Yeah, help yourself," Roy jokes dryly, pressing the edge of his fork into soft egg. "Not like this is _my_ breakfast or anything." 

"It's chef tax," Wally replies breezily. "Anyway, you don't need eight pieces of bacon." 

Roy rolls his eyes and stacks egg on bacon to shove into his mouth. 

"You could have made yourself breakfast, you know," he says around his food - unlike Donna, Wally doesn't try to shove his jaw shut. "Kitchen's all yours. Mi casa es tu casa and all that." 

"Eh, it tastes better when it's yours," Wally jokes, plucking another strip to break it in half. "Something about a forbidden thrill. Hey, maybe the rogues are onto something, there." 

"You're ridiculous." 

"I'm _charming_." 

"I don't know if that's the word I'd use for you." It's exactly the word Roy _would_ use, because there's no other way to describe Wally's blend of sarcasm and humour, or the way he deliberately rambles off his point just to get a laugh. It's very charming, indeed. 

"Donna thinks I am," Wally says smugly, dipping his bacon in Roy's yolk. He doesn't even try to protest it. 

"Donna's wrong." 

Wally arches an eyebrow. "I'm telling her you said that." And he pulls out his phone for dramatic effect - Roy drops his knife and lunges to try and grab it, but Wally holds it just out of reach with a sparkling laugh. 

"You're not telling her anything!" Roy swipes uselessly at open air and falls back against the headboard with a sigh. "You little bitch." 

"Ah, but a _charming_ little bitch." Wally pockets his phone again and Roy takes up his fork/knife combo utensil again. It's hard to get used to eating with only one hand, but thankfully S.T.A.R. had already gotten most accessibility options ready for him by the time he woke up. For cutlery, a varied set of combination utensils - forks with butter knife edges on one side, sporks, a fork with a rotating head to scoop up spaghetti, a few double-ended fork/spoon or fork/knife ones so he can just spin it in his palm to use the other end instead of constantly setting it down and picking it back up. Other options, some for specific foods, some for general use, and he has yet to settle on what he likes best. The ergonomic handles help most, he finds, and the combo fork/knife is the most useful. 

"So, what do you wanna do today?" Wally licks his fingers clean - which Dick would have hated, but Roy doesn't mind. 

If Roy's honest, he mostly wants to wallow in self-pity for a couple hours, at least until the ghost of his nightmare fades away from his consciousness. Wally's doing a good job at edging out the lingering shittiness, but Roy still feels weighed down by the memory of his dreams, and of Lian calling for him, and of Lian going silent. Dick had stayed overnight with him, and he had woken up with Roy at five a.m. to climb into the bed and soothe him when Roy woke up crying, and his head still pounds from dehydration and withdrawal but he's trying to push aside the latter except for his prescription, because his arm still throbs with dull, steady pain. The nanomite treatment hadn't worked. 

"There's a pretty vicious game of foosball happening in the break room," Wally suggests. "I think it's Barry's and Clark's quarterfinals." 

"I think I wanna stay in today," Roy says quietly. "I didn't - sleep well." 

"Hey, staying in works for me," Wally says, playfully wiggling one of Roy's legs. "I'll even let you nap on me." 

"Your shift will probably be over by then." 

Wally raises an eyebrow. "My shift?" 

"Yeah, y'know, how you guys always trade out on me." Roy shrugs. "I like it." 

Wally laughs and shakes his head. "They're not _shifts_. I just text someone whenever I feel like you're getting sick of me." 

"And what's that supposed to mean? You're my best friend, man, I don't get sick of you." 

"Then that means I'm all yours today." Wally swings his legs up on the bed to sit by Roy at the headboard. 

"What about Keystone?" 

"Barry's got it covered." 

"Uh-huh, and what favour did you have to trade for that?" 

Wally flashes him a sneaky little grin. "I'm covering Barry on Friday for _date night_." 

"Wow, you traded his date night for babysitting me?" Roy snorts. "You should've bargained for something better." 

Wally shrugs. "I think it was a pretty fair deal." 

"Oh yeah? You'd rather be stuck here with me? Wally, I could start crying at any moment. It could get _ugly_." 

"You're not gonna convince me otherwise, Harper." Wally flicks his ear. "Face it, _you're_ stuck with _me_." 

"Oh no, a speedster," Roy drawls. "What a threat." 

"I don't need speed to be insufferable." Wally grins. "I just use it to be insufferable _faster_." 

\-- 

Roy's ringtone breaks the sullen silence of his bedroom. It's hard to pull his gaze from the TV to pick it up, but he manages, even through a fog of disbelief and a dull headache. 

"Hey, kid." 

"Ollie." 

"You heard?" 

"Yeah." Roy glances at the muted TV, still running a scroll along the bottom about the exile of Oliver Queen. "I thought you'd get worse." 

"I got lucky," Ollie says with disdain. "I shouldn't have." 

Roy chews on his answer for a long moment, then - 

"I'm glad they let you go." 

"Thanks." It rings hollow, somehow, Ollie's disappointment and conflict echoing in each syllable he speaks. "I guess I should count my blessings, huh?" 

Roy twists his fingers in the sheets. "What are you gonna do?" 

"Hal's offered me his place in Coast to crash for now." Ollie's breath crackles against the microphone. "Barry, as well, in Central." 

"And afterwards?" Because Roy knows how this goes, knows that Ollie's never been happy outside of Star. Always on the move, always trying to get back home. 

"I don't know." Fabric rustles on Ollie's end. "I'll figure it out as I go." 

"I thought I was the one that made it up as I went along." A joke that falls somewhere between funny and flat, an odd liminal space where Roy never opens up to Ollie except to make a joke. Ollie's a good man, but he's not...he's not the father figure Roy needs. He's the right mentor, and the right role model, but fiercely paternal isn't in Ollie's repertoire. 

"Maybe I'll take a page out of your book," Ollie replies, a smile lingering in his voice. "Find some guys my own age and set up base in a big obnoxious tower in New York." 

"You've already got a big obnoxious tower in space," Roy reminds him, but can't help his amused grin at the thought of Ollie running around as a Titan. 

Ollie hums, and the line falls silent between them. 

"I've only got 24 hours to get my stuff," Ollie says. 

"What about Dinah?" 

Ollie sighs. "Dinah...and I are taking a break." 

"Oh." 

"Yeah." A thump. "It's good for both of us, really. We need the space." 

"And after _that_?" 

"Well, hopefully she'll take me back. God knows I won't stop loving her." 

Roy huffs. "So, 24 hours to pack up your house, huh?" 

Ollie gives a small laugh. "I'm not coming for the material stuff. I spent five years on an island, remember?" 

"You never let us forget." 

"I wanna see you, if you're up to it." 

Roy glances at the calendar hanging above his bedside table. There's a series of green checkmarks marking off the days he managed to resist the allure of double-dosing painkillers - a couple blank days where he relapsed, where he tripped. He wants to cross them off with red X's, but Hal always reminds him that encouragement works better than punishment, and the positive reinforcement of the green checkmarks is the best option. So Roy leaves them blank. Seems fitting, for how he loses time when he double doses. 

"I'm not fantastic," he admits. "I'm doing _better_ , but I'm not really okay." 

"Better is good," Ollie reassures him. "It means you're healing." 

"I have help." Roy's throat clicks when he swallows. "Hal and - Barry, and the Titans are sticking around." Taking Ollie's advice, like he wants to. "The family, too, but they're busier with Star." 

"Good," Ollie says. Pride rings in his voice. Roy finds himself smiling despite the dismal news headlining across the screen. 

"I'm not really up for a lot of socialisation," he says, "but I can meet you tomorrow morning, if you want." 

"I'd love that. Where?" 

"I - " it occurs to Roy that Ollie has little to no idea of his current living arrangements. Probably thinks he's crashing at Dinah's, or Hal's. "I'm in an apartment at S.T.A.R. Fourth floor, number 2." 

"Oh, I didn't know you were staying at S.T.A.R." 

"It's easier for the arm." 

"They fixed that yet?" Jokingly blunt. Roy chuckles. 

"Not quite, but they're working on a new prosthetic for me." Blue, like Wally suggested. Might as well have a spark of colour for his new reality. 

"It'll clash with your hair," Ollie teases. 

"Matches my eyes, though," Roy replies, familiar and easy. Ollie laughs, bright and loud. 

"Well, I gotta clear out by two p.m. tomorrow," Ollie says afterwards, but he sounds lighter than when the call started. "So I'm gonna swing by the house tonight, get my stuff together, make some house calls, and I'll see you tomorrow morning?" 

"Yeah. Does nine sound good?" 

"It sounds great." 

"I'll see ya then, Roy." 

"See ya." 

\-- 

A couple days after Ollie's departure, Roy is perched on a padded bench in the medical wing, patiently waiting for Victor to finish calibrating his new prosthetic. 

"It shouldn't be as painful going in, this time," Victor says. "The treatment courses for the nanomites have reduced their numbers, but we're still working on a permanent solution for them." 

"I'm not stupid enough to think it would be easy," Roy jokes, shaking his hair out of his eyes. He hasn't had a haircut since before the attack, and it's starting to show. 

"That'd be too simple," Connor agrees, sitting down beside him to hand him a glass of water. 

"Exactly, you get it." Roy sets his water down on his opposite side to throw an arm around Connor's shoulders and pull him in for a half-hug. He can't knuckle his head without the prosthetic, so he does it with his chin instead, and Connor shakes with laughter into his chest, playfully trying to push him off. 

He hasn't seen Connor for any particularly significant amount of time since the gathering with Jade - after the attack, and after Roy got more personally settled in S.T.A.R., Dinah, Mia, and Connor had taken up their usual roles in the city again, working around the clock to help calm some of the inevitable disquiet and take shifts at emergency shelters for everyone who lost a home. 

They look remarkably calm, for people that have been through as much as they have. There's still scars, still pain, always is with this sort of thing - Dinah's missing wedding ring, the bridled tension in Mia's shoulders, the bruises littering Connor's arms from a couple rough nights on the street. Roy doesn't know if he misses the vigilante work yet. Does, on a base, _this is what I do_ level. Then doesn't, when he thinks of the steps he was taking to settle down with Lian, the cutting back he was already doing. 

"If you dye your hair, you're practically the Winter Soldier already." 

"Fuck you, Mia," Roy replies cheerfully, releasing Connor to lean over him and flick her ear. It's worth it to see her smile. "You're uninvited to my arm party." 

"Too bad, I'm already here." She bats his hand away and reaches to flick his nose painfully - Connor slaps them apart with the back of his hand, sighing in that playfully put-upon way of his. 

"Sorry, are we messing up your _zen_?" Mia jokes. 

"Oh, I never had it, with you two." Connor breaks out in a sunny grin that makes Mia crack up loudly - Roy, too, although slightly more subdued. 

He glances over his shoulder to see Dinah watching them from afar, perched on a stool beside Mid-Nite. She's been more withdrawn lately, more closed-off. Roy gets it. He doesn't push. He waves, and she waves back with a genuine-enough smile. 

"Okay, we're ready to put this on." Victor approaches cradling the prosthetic in one arm, kneeling beside Roy as he prepares to put it into place. "This won't hurt nearly as much, I promise." 

"I trust you, Vic," Roy says, and stays very still as Victor lines up the connectors. 

True to his word, it doesn't hurt nearly _half_ as much as the previous one, but still enough for Roy to hiss in pain - Connor slips a hand into his and Roy squeezes it gratefully, then harder when a new wave of pain washes over him. He shuts his eyes and focuses on the feeling of the nerve endings lining up - it's a strange feeling, almost like a cross between a sizzle and a sigh, like agony and relief rolled into one. 

"It's done," Victor announces, and Roy opens his eyes to look at his new arm. It's a blue, gleaming metal, and more detailed in the joints than his previous one. It takes a moment, but when he flexes his fingers, his fingers actually _flex_ , not even a squeak of protest from the metal. 

"That looks _wicked_ ," Mia says, perking up to watch Roy manoeuvre the arm. 

Victor runs him through a few calibration exercises, and a few test exercises, and he passes with flying colours. 

"Hey, Dinah, throw something!" He calls, raising his hand in anticipation. Dinah cocks an eyebrow and takes a pack of gum out of her pocket to toss it at him. He catches it easily, delighted at the new freedom of movement. It's _miles_ better than his old arm, much more coordinated, and with the nanomites reduced, he's in so much less pain. 

It's a _relief_ , for Mid-Nite to hand him a prescription for much less powerful painkillers, and not even a _daily_ dosage - just one pill to be taken when needed, to help with swelling. 

It feels a lot like a step forward. It feels like a _victory_ , and Roy desperately needs those. 

\-- 

The sun shines bright in the afternoons now, edging out the spells of rain with a cheerful sweep of light. It highlights everything in loving detail, from the cracks in the sidewalk to the loose threads on Donna's sweatshirt, her hands tucked into the sleeves as she walks with Roy. The sun highlights her smile, soft and beautiful and everything Roy ever wanted when he was a teenager, just a chance to make her as happy as she could be. 

She tells him often that he did, and _does_ , even now, as friends, and it's slowly becoming easier to accept that he can still be a positive force in his friends' lives despite all the shit that's befallen him. Now, Donna squeezes his arm and follows him to the bench, a grounding corner in the upheaval of his life. 

But like the rest of Star City, Roy's life is slowly settling into some sort of haphazard normal. Still rough, still raw, but past the shock, now, of losing everything so dear to him. 

The park is one he used to go to with Lian. Only a little, when he first got her, and then practically every weekend, when she got older, because she loved to try and chase the birds and make flower crowns with her friends. She would almost always stick one on Roy's head, too, and he'd try and keep it on as long as possible. He has one he's preserved between thin glass pages back at home, a lopsided ring of daises in full bloom. 

He had been here with Jade, during her brief stay and briefer tour of Lian's memory lane. This park had been one of them, with the colourful playground and the daisy patch blooming underneath a great big oak tree. 

The turn of spring means the birds are swooping among the branches again, chirping happily above their heads. Everything is green and lush, morning dew-drops still clinging onto the shaded areas of grass. They can hear kids shouting and cheering far away, and the chatter of joggers down the path. 

When he was here with Jade, the daisies were still green and furled. Now, they bloom in delicate curls among the grass, bright and happy, like they knew he'd be there today. Like they're renewed by a new force. 

For once, seeing them doesn't make Roy want to cry. For once, they fill him with a quiet happiness he can't really explain, a bubble of hope settling in his chest, somewhere between his heart and his lungs. 

"Have you ever made a flower crown?" He asks, slanting a glance to Donna. She frowns, a delicate furrow between her brows. 

"I don't think so." 

Roy grins and grabs her hand. 

"C'mon, princess, I'll show you." 

"Are you _sure_ you're okay?" She laughs, but lets him tug her off the bench. 

"I'm a lot better than I was," he answers, and _believes_ it. 


End file.
